Milton Friedman in his article
“The Social Responsibility of Business is to Increase its Profits” states that only people can have responsibilities, and that there is not such a thing like social responsibility of business. A corporation, according to Friedman, is an artificial person and, therefore, may have artificial responsibilities. The individuals who are responsible of the corporation are businessmen, which are individual proprietors or corporate executives. A corporate executive is employed by the owners of the business. And its responsibility is to conduct the business in a way that maximizes the profits while conforming to the basic rules of the society. A corporate executive, as any other person, may have many other responsibilities that he recognizes or assumes voluntarily, which can be referred as “social responsibilities.” These social responsibilities correspond to individuals, not to businesses. The main objective of corporate executives is to maximize the profits of all stockholders; therefore, they are to act in a way that is in the interest of those owners of the business. In this sense, a corporate executive shall not engage in social activities, unless they are done from an individualistic point of view instead of from a business point of view because, in the last case, he or she would be spending somebody else’s money, and not serving the interests of the employers.
On the other hand, the situation of the individual proprietor differs because, if he reduces the returns of his company for “social responsibility”, he is, in fact, using his own money, not others’ money. Friedman concludes that, in a free society, “there is one and only one social responsibility of business – to use its resources and engage in activities designed to increase its profits so long as it stays within the rules of the game,[…], engages in open and free competition